1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a sub-assembly for use in medication dispenser stations for dispensing certain pharmaceutical items from locked storage in a hospital or nursing home environment. More particularly, this invention pertains to a sub-assembly that can stock a large quantity and variety of pharmaceutical items, dispense them one at a time upon receipt of certain electronic inputs, and that can be controllably opened for rapid reloading of further quantities of the stock in a strict accountability and security environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The time-honored practice of dispensing pharmaceutical items and other medications from a centralized hospital pharmacy and retaining them in locked and/or unlocked storage at specific nursing stations for later distribution to patients and for manually logging the administration of these medications in patient records has given way to a more positive and efficient format. In many hospitals and nursing homes, medicines are now held under locked storage in medication dispenser stations, such as the one disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,875, where nursing personnel retrieve the medicine from locked storage for dispensing, simultaneously and automatically updating the patient's records and billing. Such a modernized dispenser system reduces handling of medications, eliminates to a large extent the courier services normally involved with carrying the medications from the pharmacy directly to the nursing station, and eliminates errors generally associated with manually logged information and data.
In many of these medication dispenser stations, the locked drawers that are unlocked in response to receipt of certain access codes and other keyboard entry data include multi-compartment carousel tray-type drawers permitting limited access to the appropriate medication while denying access to other compartments in the tray. In these situations, dispensing a single medication, such as a 5 ml. preloaded syringe of narcotic or other medicine, requires utilization of the same size compartment used for dispensing other medications of a larger size.
In practice, multiples of small medical items are deposited in one compartment and dispensed therefrom as single units or in multiple doses. Access is restricted to personnel having proper security clearances, however, once access is obtained, full accountability of individual items is somewhat compromised as the personnel may now obtain more than the authorized number of items in the compartment even though these items are separated from other items residing in locked compartments elsewhere in the station. Utilizing one whole compartment for a single item would increase security and reduce the potential for pilfering. However, it would soon exhaust the inventory of locked storage compartments, thereby requiring frequent re-stocking.
Many pharmaceutical items are small in size and singular in application and, in some cases quite expensive thus requiring greater security in storing and dispensing. For instance, syringes preloaded with narcotics and vials or ampules containing tissue plasminogen activators, and medical test kits are often used in single quantities only and controls are required to ensure fully locked storage and absolutely controlled single-unit dispensing. Further, during re-stocking with new items, security must be maintained to prevent access to other items already in storage. This is all the more difficult when it is desired to store large quantities of items numbering into the hundreds and dispense them individually upon command. There is a serious need, therefore, for a sub-assembly that may be installed in a medication dispenser station to hold a large quantity of small pharmaceutical items, in locked storage, for controlled dispensing from such storage where the total amount of the stock must be sufficient to last through the normal pharmaceutical dispensing period, where the accountability of storage and dispensing must be raised to near-perfect levels, and where restocking may be undertaken and completed in rapid order also under full security.